Anna had barely crossed the threshold of her workplace when an ambulance pulled up to the modest gray building, followed by a whole line of elegant cars decorated with ribbons and flowers. The scene was so unexpected and unnatural that all her colleagues, caught off guard, started going outside one by one to see this strange spectacle with their own eyes. Situations like this—when a festive wedding motorcade heads toward a place like this—happen once in a lifetime, if they happen at all. Just at that moment, one work shift was ending and another was beginning, so quite a few people had gathered, whispering among themselves about what was going on.
Anna herself chose to step a little aside, into the shade of a large old maple tree. She hadn’t been working here long, just a few months, and she hardly knew any of her coworkers by sight, nor did she seek to get closer to them. She could feel their glances on her, full of unspoken things. Everyone quietly knew where she had come from, though no one ever said it out loud. Anna had only recently been released after a long absence. No one asked her directly what she had had to pay for with years of her life, but the shared knowledge hung in the air, heavy and invisible.
She simply did her job—mopping floors, emptying trash, keeping everything clean. Many probably thought to themselves that this was still better than a darker path. But she hadn’t served her long term for any material crime. Long ago, Anna had taken her husband’s life. Their marriage had been short, only a single year, but the second day after the wedding had been enough to understand: behind the beautiful façade hid a true monster who had been playing a role to perfection—until then.
Year after year he broke her will, and there was no one she could turn to for help—Anna had grown up within the walls of a state institution, never knowing parental affection or the support of a loving soul. In the end her strength ran out, and one terrible evening, when he raised his hand against her yet again, her fingers closed on the cold handle of a kitchen knife almost of their own accord.
His family was large and influential, with considerable weight in society; they demanded the harshest possible sentence for her, the most dreadful retribution. But the judge, an elderly woman with gray hair and wise, tired eyes, remarked that there are deeds for which one is not punished but, perhaps, even thanked, for they cleanse our world of filth. Anna was sentenced to seven years, and after six she was released early.
The doors of normal jobs were shut tight in her face. But one day, walking past this very gray building, she saw a modest notice saying they needed a cleaner. The number in the “salary” line was surprisingly high. Preparing herself for yet another polite but firm refusal, Anna honestly told the manager her story. To her astonishment, they hired her. At first, every minute within those walls cost her enormous effort, but an elderly employee named Semenovich, noticing how pale she was and how tightly her hands were clenched, once gave her a gentle smile and said in a quiet, steady voice:
“Fear the living, my dear. These ones… they can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Anna remembered those words; they became her support. And after a few weeks she could calmly enter any room without flinching at the silence or being frightened by the sound of her own footsteps.
Meanwhile, the paramedics carefully lifted a stretcher from the ambulance. On it, in a billowing white dress studded with tiny pearls, lay the bride. Next to her, not taking a single step away, stood the groom. It was almost unbearable to look at him: it was as if he existed in another dimension, seeing neither people, nor cars, nor even the time of day. His gaze was fixed on his beloved’s face, lost and infinitely desperate. With great difficulty, his relatives managed to lead him away. He sobbed, his body twisting, trying to break free and go back to her, and in the end they practically carried him off.
Later, as Anna was walking past a couple of orderlies talking together, she caught fragments of their conversation: the bride had been poisoned by her own friend, right in the middle of the wedding celebration. It turned out that the groom had once been involved with that very girl, but then he had met his true destiny and fallen deeply in love with her. The friend hadn’t been able to accept the loss and rejection, and now, although she had already been detained, nothing could be undone.
Passing by the stretcher where the bride lay, Anna paused for a moment. The girl was ethereally, fragilely beautiful, as if she had simply fallen asleep. The expression on her face was peaceful, serene, with no trace of suffering.
“Anna, finish up in that room, then come through here and you can close up,” came Semenovich’s calm, familiar voice.
“Aren’t you going to do the examination today?” Anna asked quietly.
“No, not today. I have to leave urgently for an important family matter. Tomorrow I’ll come in earlier, first thing in the morning, and start then,” the elderly man replied. “Anya, I’m human too, you know, and I also have things that sometimes just can’t wait.”
“I see,” she simply nodded in response.
“That’s good,” said Semenovich, putting on his old coat. “These ones are in no hurry anymore—they have all eternity ahead of them. They can wait.”
He left, his footsteps fading around the corner, and Anna found herself thinking how strangely life is arranged: perhaps it was exactly this kind of work, in such a place of eternal silence, that made people become a bit of a philosopher and look at the world differently.
When she finished mopping the floors, she closed one of the doors and went outside for a breath of fresh air. Dusk was thickening, painting the sky in rich dark-blue tones. Not far away, on an old wooden bench, someone was sitting alone. Squinting, Anna recognized, with a pang of pity, the same groom. His motionless, almost petrified figure, frozen across from the bleak building, filled her with a sharp sorrow. Mustering her courage, she walked slowly over to him.
“Do you… need any help?” she asked quietly, afraid to disturb his silence.
He slowly tore his gaze away from some distant point and focused it on her. The silence stretched out, but then he gave the slightest nod.
“Could you… take me to her? Just for a minute.”
“No, I can’t. I’d be fired on the spot,” Anna answered honestly, looking him straight in the eyes. “And no one else will hire me. Ever.”
The young man nodded again, with such indifference that it seemed nothing in the world mattered to him anymore.
“I figured as much. And why won’t anyone hire you?”
This time his question seemed asked only to fill the pause, so he wouldn’t be left alone with his thoughts. Anna looked at his pale, grief-stricken face and decided that perhaps her story might, even a little bit, distract him from the weight of his sorrow.
“I was released not so long ago. I served a sentence. For taking my husband’s life.”
He nodded again, as if his world no longer had room for surprise.
“Sad,” he murmured. “And her… she hasn’t been examined yet?”
“No. They’ll do everything tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ll sit here. And when they lay her in the ground… then I will…”
“What are you saying? You mustn’t talk like that!” Anna tried to reason with him, and for the first time her voice rang with real, living emotion. “I understand you’re in unbearable pain, but you can’t say or even think such things.”
“I know. But I’ve already made up my mind,” he said, turning away to show the conversation was over.
Anna realized that words were powerless here. The only thing she could do was try to find his family and warn them about his state. They would have to come back soon anyway. Walking away from the building, she glanced back one last time at the solitary figure on the bench. He was still sitting motionless, staring at the dimly glowing windows. Anna sighed heavily; her heart tightened with sympathy.
She went back inside to finish her workday. While cleaning the room where the bride was lying, she again paid attention to the girl. The color of her face seemed unusually fresh, alive. “Maybe that’s the effect of the poison?” flashed through her mind. Carefully, she took the girl’s hand to lay it neatly along her side, and at that very moment Anna cried out in surprise: the hand was warm and soft—just like a living person’s. She reached out again, more boldly this time, and touched her wrist, unable to believe what she was feeling. Despite the coolness of the room, the girl’s skin remained warm.
Anna’s heart began to pound wildly. She rushed to her bag, feverishly trying to figure out how to test her seemingly mad guess. It occurred to her to use a small mirror: if she brought it to the girl’s mouth and nose, a faint mist might appear on the glass from her breath—if there was any. Finding a compact mirror in her purse, she ran back, nearly knocking over a young orderly in the hallway.
“Anna, what happened?” he asked in surprise.
His name was Artyom. He had recently graduated from medical college and worked here part-time. Everyone knew him as a capable and promising young man.
“Artyom, come quickly!” she gasped, grabbing his sleeve so as not to waste precious seconds on explanations.
Anna ran up to the bride and held the shiny surface of the mirror to her face. Artyom, seeing what she was doing, asked in confusion:
“Why are you doing that? What’s going on?”
But at that very second a faint, barely visible but undeniable hazy mark appeared on the cold glass. The mirror had fogged up. Artyom sprang to his feet; his eyes widened in astonishment.
“Anna, call Semenovich immediately! I’ll do everything I can right now!”
While Anna, her hands trembling, dialed the number, Artyom had already returned with a set of instruments. He slipped on a stethoscope and bent over the girl everyone had assumed to be lifeless. As Anna, stumbling over her words, tried to explain the situation to Semenovich, Artyom raised his shining eyes to her.
“Her heart is beating! Very faintly, barely audible—but it’s beating! I’m calling the resuscitation team!”
Barely knowing what she was doing, Anna ran outside. She knew she had to find him—that young man—and tell him, give him at least a crumb of hope. He was still sitting on the same bench, and she hurried over, out of breath.
“Your bride… she’s alive!”
He lifted his eyes to her, hollow with grief; confusion flickered in them. At that very moment another ambulance screeched up to the building, its lights blazing and siren wailing.
“You… you’re not lying to me?” he whispered, squeezing her hand so hard her bones protested.
“No. I don’t know how it’s possible, but your bride is alive. She’s breathing!”
He shot to his feet as if struck by electricity and raced toward the doors just as they were carrying his beloved out on a stretcher, the doctor already setting up an IV line.
“I’m going with her!” he shouted, his voice breaking.
The doctor looked at him sternly over his glasses.
“I’m her husband. Today was our wedding. Please let me stay with her.”
The doctor gave a brief nod, his face remaining focused.
“Get in the ambulance. Quickly. Every second counts now.”
The ambulance roared off, disappearing into the dusky city, and Anna and Artyom stood side by side, watching it go. The air was filled with a silence heavy with unspoken questions and relief.
“Anna, I think you worked a real miracle today,” Artyom finally broke the silence, when the tremor in her hands had eased a little. “The doctor said that if it hadn’t been for the lowered temperature in the room, which slowed down all the processes in her body, there would’ve been no chance. That poison was complex; it mimicked complete biological death.”
Anna wiped away a single traitorous tear that had slipped from the corner of her eye and quietly, almost to herself, said:
“One life for another. Once I took a life… today I may have given one back.”
Artyom heard her and smiled gently, his tired face suddenly looking younger.
“Anna, how about some tea? It’s not exactly the ideal place for a tea party, but I think we’ve earned it.”
She nodded, feeling an unexpected wave of lightness.
“Only outside. In the fresh air.”
And so the two of them—tired, but strangely illuminated—walked toward the same bench where the inconsolable groom had been sitting not long before.
For the first time, Anna really looked at Artyom. His glasses made him look like a young student, but in conversation little details slipped out that spoke of a great deal of life experience. It turned out that after school he had served in the army, then stayed on contract at a military hospital, and it was there, amid pain and courage, that he realized he wanted to devote his life to medicine.
“I saw how real doctors work,” he said. “Of course, they sometimes make mistakes—like today—but they also perform genuine miracles in conditions an ordinary person couldn’t even imagine. Anna, may I ask… what happened in your life? If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to.”
Anna was silent for a while, watching the steam rise from the plastic cup, and then she started to talk. She spoke slowly, choosing her words, and he listened without interrupting her once—not a word, not even a sigh. When she finished, he gazed off into the distance for a long moment and then said quietly, but very firmly:
“You’ve no right to blame yourself. Not one bit. Not for a single second.”
Anna stared at him in astonishment.
“You’re… you’re the first person who’s ever said that to me. Everyone else, even those who pitied me, saw a criminal first and foremost.”
They hadn’t finished their tea when a familiar car pulled up to the building. Semenovich stepped out. Seeing them on the bench, he walked over at an unhurried pace.
“Well, lovebirds, sitting here saving the world?” he joked, his eyes sparkling kindly.
Artyom slapped his knee lightly and replied:
“Just imagine, Pyotr Semenovich, this is a first in my practice! Turns out that friend didn’t quite give her what she thought. It was some powerful pharmacological drug, an extremely strong sedative that induces a state very similar to biological death. A slightly higher dose—and that’s it, past the point of no return.”
“Good thing I had that urgent business today,” Semenovich said thoughtfully, stroking his gray stubble. “Otherwise there’d have been no miracle at all.”
Anna looked at him with wide-open eyes, in which surprise, joy, and a new, unfamiliar sense of inner peace all mingled together.
“I never would have believed something like this was possible in real life. Never.”
The next morning, after finishing her shift, Anna walked out of the gray building and headed for the bus stop. The air smelled of freshness and hope.
Right by the stop, a modest but neat car pulled up. The passenger window rolled down, and Anna saw Artyom’s smiling face.
“Anna, hop in, I’ll give you a ride. And we’ll take a little drive around the city while we’re at it,” he offered.
She froze for a moment in surprise. Why? Why was he doing this, when everyone else tried to stay away from her? She automatically turned toward the morgue building and saw several orderlies standing at the entrance, openly watching the scene with curiosity. Artyom glanced in their direction, then at the rearview mirror, and his smile widened.
“Does their opinion really matter to you? Truly?”
Anna hesitated only for a second, then nodded decisively, opened the door, and got into the car. That was how their daily rides began. A couple of weeks into these shared trips home, Artyom, staring straight at the road, suddenly said:
“Anna, how about we go out sometime? To a movie, for example. Or just to a café, sit and talk.”
She silently shook her head and turned to the window.
“Why not?” he gently pressed.
“Why do you need this? You know perfectly well who I am and where I come from,” came the quiet but firm reply.
“I was in the war, Anna. I fired a weapon. And not an air rifle,” he said. “Believe me, all that—your past—those are trifles, dust that blows away on the wind.”
That evening, as Anna was cleaning a long empty corridor, she caught herself with a faint, almost invisible smile on her lips. She hadn’t given Artyom a final answer yet, but inside she already knew how much she wanted to just go to the movies with him like ordinary people do. She wanted to live a full life, not exist on its margins, branded by other people’s judgments.
“Artyom, are you out of your mind? What do you need this for? Looking to play around?” a coarse, mocking voice drifted out from the open door of the staff room.
“That’s my personal business, and it doesn’t concern anyone but me,” Artyom’s calm but firm voice answered.
“You’re completely crazy! She did time! Have you thought about what people will say about you?” the other man wouldn’t let up.
A minute later Artyom stepped into the corridor. He rubbed his knuckles; his face was serious. He walked up to the one who had been shouting and spoke quietly, but each word hit dead center.
“Listen carefully. One more word like that about her, and you’ll find yourself in one of those rooms as a permanent guest.”
The orderly stepped back, snorted, trying to keep his bravado, but fear flickered in his eyes.
“You’re all nuts here. Completely crazy.”
Anna watched as Artyom walked firmly over to her, took her by the elbow, and led her away—from those walls, from the whispers, from the past.
“This can’t go on, and I won’t allow it,” he said, stopping and looking her straight in the eyes. “Anna, I like you very much. As a person, as a woman. And we have to do something about it.”
She stared at him in confusion; her mind was scrambling for words, questions, objections—but at that very moment a cheerful young voice rang out behind them:
“What is there to think about? You need to get married! That’s the real solution! And we’ll throw you such a wedding that the whole city will be talking!”
Anna couldn’t believe her ears. It felt like she was hearing voices from another dimension. She turned around slowly and saw the same young couple—the groom and his bride. The girl, still a little pale but radiant with happiness and health, looked stunning. With a warm, beaming smile, she held out a bouquet of white roses to Anna.
“You simply don’t have the right to say no. You’re the most wonderful couple in the world, and we want to thank you. You gave us back both our lives.”
But Anna and Artyom ultimately refused a lavish, crowded celebration. They were no longer twenty-year-old romantics, and their circle of close friends was small. So the happy couple gave them something Anna had never even dared to dream of—a trip to the sea. Anna had never seen the ocean in her life.
Some time after their modest civil ceremony, Anna quit her job. Artyom told her that she had a whole life ahead of her to find something she truly enjoyed, and that his duty now was to bring her joy, take care of her, and show her the entire world.
They stood on warm sand, and the endless deep-blue ocean stretched out before them to the very horizon. The sound of the surf was like the beating of a huge, kind heart. Artyom held her hand tightly, and Anna, closing her eyes, turned her face to the salty wind. She wasn’t just looking at the sea—she felt its power and boundlessness. And for the first time in many, many years, her own soul, once crushed and torn, spread its wings and flew toward that infinite blue, toward a new life where yesterday’s shadows no longer had power over tomorrow’s sun.
And in that moment of absolute happiness there was no past and no future—there was only a generous, boundless, forgiving present